He did one more sweep of the house before setting the alarm and heading back to his room. He switched into a pair of flannel pajama pants and lost his t-shirt, storing his Glock in the top drawer of the nightstand for easy access. He did his best to fall asleep, but every time he closed his eyes all he could see was Elijah staring up at him with those glacier blue eyes, his lips parted and pupils blown wide.
He needed to jerk off. Get it out of his fucking system. He couldn’t afford to get sloppy. The threats against Elijah were real enough that the studio had hired round-the-clock protection for him.
He opened his laptop, Linc’s voice filtering through his brain.Full-frontal. Hot, artsy, indie sex scenes.Shep didn’t knowwhat that meant, but he found he himself eager to learn.He pulled up his browser. Shep knew enough about normal people to know using Elijah’s sex scenes for his own personal gratification could be construed as an invasion of privacy, but that didn’t stop him. In truth, it didn’t even give him pause. Elijah wanted him to watch, had as much as told him so in the kitchen. The boy was an enigma, and it made Shep’s cock ache even though he couldn’t say why.Would he like knowing Shep could see him on the CC feed? Would he get off knowing Shep could watch him in his room any time he wanted? The thought seemed to take root in his brain.
A five-minute Google search gave him what he wanted. Elijah’s movie… on PornHub. How hot were the sex scenes if they made it onto a porn site that more than one million people had clicked on? A strange fire licked through him at the thought of all those people looking at Elijah. His Elijah. He shook the thought away as he clicked the link. It claimed to be a compilation video of every sex scene in the movie. Just staring at the picture of a darkened room marred by the white play button had his cock leaking. He slipped his hand into his pants, stroking himself a few times. He groaned. He didn’t have lube handy, but the few times he’d bothered to jerk off, it was with nothing more than spit. In the desert, everybody improvised.
He hit play. The first scene was just Elijah standing nude in front of a full-length mirror, his limp cock nestled against dark curls. Seeing Elijah standing there touching himself, examining his own body with a secret smile made Shep crazy. It was so like the dreamy expression he’d had just moments before when he danced.
Before he could commit the image to memory, it changed. Two bodies, barely more than silhouettes in the darkness. Still, he easily made out Elijah’s profile, his nose, his chin, the shape of his arms, the curve of his lithe body beneath the larger, stockier man. Elijah was on all fours, back arched as the man’s lips skimmed along his spine, trailing over his hip before moving lower still.
Shep’s nostrils flared, his fist tightening around his cock as an unfamiliar feeling spread like acid through his bloodstream, almost distracting enough to pull him from his current task. A bubble of laughter fell from his lips as he identified the sensation. Jealousy. He was jealous of a stranger pretending to pleasure a person who, for all intents and purposes, was also a stranger to Shep. It was acting. Just acting. Elijah didn’t really want that man’s hands on him, didn’t want his lips. The stranger wasn’t really spreading Elijah open and tasting the most intimate parts of him. The boy’s sounds weren’t real, that other man wasn’t bringing him pleasure. Logically, Shep understood that butwatching the man touch Elijah spurred an uncharacteristic rage that itched beneath his skin.
It hit him then. He wanted to be that man, he wanted to yank those sounds from Elijah, to know what he really sounded like when it was Shep’s tongue licking over him. Watching the man touch Elijah caused Shep’s skin to itch. Elijah was his. His rabbit. His new toy and he didn’t want to share no matter how irrational it seemed.
Shep worked himself faster, his breath coming in bursts as he watched the man pretend to fuck Elijah from behind, pretend to drive into him over and over. In Shep’s mind, it was him. He was gripping Elijah’s hips, he was pushing his shoulders down so he could drive deeper into the tight heat of Elijah’s body. Jesus, the sounds the boy was making. Shep shut his eyes, focusing on Elijah’s breathy little noises, his soft cries, the sounds of their bodies slapping together.
The scenes kept shifting, changing, each one more passionate and dirty sounding than the next but Shep never opened his eyes. He didn’t want to ruin the illusion, the illusion of him and Elijah. The image of Elijah, head back, lips parted, Shep’s name falling from his lips. He wanted that, wanted to watch Elijah fall apart beneath him, wanted to know what he looked like as he found his release, wanted to make sure Elijah knew it was Shep—only Shep—giving him pleasure.
Shep bit down on his lip as he came, his hips stuttering as he jerked himself through the aftershocks, waves of pleasure rolling over him.Jesus.He stared up into the darkness, waiting for his heart rate to return to normal. That had never happened to him before. He’d never fantasized about another person while jerking off, he’d never thought of much of anything aside from the stimulus itself. This was something new, something different. Shep loved an anomaly. A glitch in the matrix. Elijah was his glitch and Shep couldn’t wait to explore him further. Something nagged at him. A failsafe, a question burned into his brain through years of conditioning, his family always begging him to ask himself one question: Should he?
Should he take Elijah apart? Examine him? Make him cry? Make him moan? Make him reveal all his secrets? It seemed an asinine question to ask himself when he lacked the very emotion necessary to form a competent answer. But there was one person who always seemed to know the right answer.
He snatched his phone off the bedside table and pulled up his brother’s number, firing off a text.
Shep: Look, I know you’re probably in Nepal or some shit fucking two sherpas and a yak, but I have a situation. Text me when you aren’t dangling off the side of a mountain. Sooner rather than later. Before I do something stupid.
He pulled up the security feeds, toggling to Elijah’s room. The light was still on, but he was out cold. He’dcollapsed face down into the mattress, his tight leather pants still bunched around his thighs like he’d tried to remove them but had lost steam before completing the task. He wore no underwear. He looked debauched; his pants caught just beneath the globes of his perfect ass. Once more that strange sensation assaulted him. He cleaned himself up, righting his clothes before heading back downstairs. He entered Elijah's bedroom, pulling a throw from the back of a chair in the corner and draping it across the boy’s lower half.
Task completed; he should have left… but he didn’t. He knelt beside the bed, watching Elijah’s back rise and fall, close enough to feel his breath against his face and to note the way his long lashes cast shadows on his cheeks. He looked so much younger in sleep, when he didn’t have to perform, didn’t feel he the need to change himselfto please the world.
Shep wanted to crawl into bed with him, wrap his arms around him, scent him, bite him. The thoughtwasn’t logical. Itwent beyond any logic or reason. It was instinct, primal, animalistic, this sudden compulsion to show the world Elijah was his.
Except he wasn’t. Not really. Not yet. Maybe never. That thought had a low growl rumbling from his lips. Elijah sucked in a breath, his eyes blinking open. Any normal person would have bolted, mumbled out some insane reason to justify why they crouched beside a stranger’s bed. But Shep wasn’t normal. He pushed a lock of the boy’s hair behind his ear. A soft, sleepy smile crept across his face and he gave a contented sighbefore his eyes slipped closed again.
They were the same, Shep realized. Kindred spirits, wearing masks to make life easier for others. He needed to get Elijah to stop hiding… but how? Maybe Shep needed to reveal himself. Maybe if Elijah could see behind Shep’s mask, Elijah would see it too, would see they were the same.
Or maybe he’d run screaming, but Shep didn’t think so.
He stood but didn’t leave. The thought of leaving Elijah was a physical pull inside him, like fishhooks in his lungs. Elijah had to be his. He had to be. There was no other explanation for this feeling. Elijah… Elijah was the one thing Shep hadn’t ever thought he’d experience firsthand.
Elijah was… temptation. He was the shiny, red apple dangling from the tree of knowledge and Shep knew it didn’t matter what his brother had to say about the situation, he’d never leave the boy alone. Because Elijah might be the apple… but Shep was the serpent and he would eat Elijah whole.
“Have you lost your fucking mind?”
Lucifer’s voice penetrated Elijah’s brain like an icepick, shriller than any alarm could manage. He’d stayed up far too late playing video games with Wyatt online. He squinted towards the window. What the fuck? It was still dark outside. His brain cycled through a dozen scenarios, trying to decide which one had set her off this time, but his brain was mush. “Can you just…” He struggled to find the correct word. “Just shh.”
Good enough.
He registered the sound of retreating heels and then silence. He must have dozed off because he woke to a thousand needles piercing his skin as a deluge of frigid water hit his face. He rocketed to his feet, coughing and wheezing. Lucy smirked at him, an empty bowl in her hands.
“What. The. Fuck? You’re deranged,” he shouted, shivering.
She ignored his declaration, crossing her arms over her chest, a sneer pulling at her lips. “Did you tell Mark to turn down a meeting with Leonard Medford yesterday?”
Adrenaline spiked through him as jarring and painful as the ice water moments before. Was she kidding? That was what she was mad about? Of all the things that could have pissed her off, it never even occurred to him it would be that. “You’re joking,” he managed, even though he could find zero humor in the situation.
“You’re the most selfish person I’ve ever known.”
